Trading of equity, fixed income security, currency, commodity, options or futures, has been done in this country since the late 1700s. Traditionally, such trades have occurred on floor-based exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the American Stock Exchange (AMEX). The predominant method of trading in these floor-based environments is known as the “open outcry” system, which involves oral communications between market professionals at a central location in open view of other market professionals. In this system, an order is typically relayed out to a trader standing in a “pit.” The trader shouts out that he has received an order and waits until a broker shouts back contract terms, and a trading transaction then results. Recently, trading processes have been updated to electronic exchanges of information. One popular method of communication between traders and brokers is instant messaging (IM) also known as chat messaging.
Chat/IM clients provide a central interface presenting time-ordered messages from one or more senders, and the user's responses thereto. Current chat clients characterize messages only by the identity of the sender/recipient and the time of creation/receipt. Current chat clients can recognize quotes on a line-by-line basis, i.e. based on the content of a single message but only assuming the message contains sufficient information. However, where the information relating to a particular quote is spread across multiple messages, which may be interspersed among other messages, the chat/IM client is unable to determine the context of these related messages. Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods that can select and identify correctly, values for transactions from multiple messages using contextual clues.